Why we can’t tell good wine from bad:
In 2001, Frederic Brochet conducted two experiments at the University of Bordeaux.
In one experiment, he got 54 oenology (the study of wine tasting and wine making) undergraduates together and had them taste one glass of red wine and one glass of white wine. He had them describe each wine in as much detail as their expertise would allow. What he didn’t tell them was both were the same wine. He just dyed the white one red. In the other experiment, he asked the experts to rate two different bottles of red wine. One was very expensive, the other was cheap. Again, he tricked them. This time he had put the cheap wine in both bottles. So what were the results?
The tasters in the first experiment, the one with the dyed wine, described the sorts of berries and grapes and tannins they could detect in the red wine just as if it really was red. Every single one, all 54, could not tell it was white. In the second experiment, the one with the switched labels, the subjects went on and on about the cheap wine in the expensive bottle. They called it complex and rounded. They called the same wine in the cheap bottle weak and flat.
I’ve always suspected this. And it reminds me of this post from a couple years ago.
William F. Buckley had this figured out years ago. He was famous for never serving wines costing more than $5 a bottle at his dinner parties, maintaining that you could find perfectly good wines at that price. Eventually inflation forced him to up the level to $10, when you couldn’t get anything other than Mad Dog 20-20 for 5.
It’s a lot like rating a blog, I suppose.
This one, of course, is superb…
This doesn’t only apply to wines. I remember reading a while back about a blind testing session done on night creams – the really thick, gooey sort applied at night (usually by women) in an attempt to make the skin softer and so on.
The test was done using a huge range of creams, ranging from around £2 to over £70 for a 100-gram pot, and tested by about 30 women. And just to make it interesting, they slipped in a ringer – Flora margarine with some scent added to get rid of the artificial butter aroma. Guess which one won the test?
This also applies to reporters talking about political parties and policies….
As a lifelong teetotaler I have never ceased to marvel at the pretentious fuss so many make over spoiled grape juice. My abstinence is based on no moral objections, by the way, it’s just that all alcoholic beverages taste like slightly flavored kerosene to me, except for beer which tastes like dishwater. Alcohol, I’m told, is an acquired taste, but it’s one I’ve never seen the slightest point in acquiring.
Yeah..today’s undergrads wouldn’t know a red from a white from jungle juice from moonshine. Very poor sample selection. Wine is a picky and subjective taste, but there is no way anyone who drinks wine with any frequency would make this mistake. And while I’m sticking up for the snooty,Starbucks Via instant coffee was exposed in less than 3 seconds on my palate compared to any dark/medium/ French or whatever roast of the real unadulterated bean brew.
I think there are actual super tasters out there that can discern these differences. I don’t think it’s something that can be taught though. Sounds more like yet another degree program designed to separate nascent “wine-tasters” from their hard-earned money with little else to show for it. Well, maybe they gain a compendium of nouns used to describe wine out of it I guess.
While the power of expectations is pretty strong, I think it would be wrong to interpret this experiment as devaluing differences in wine that humans can easily detect and enjoy, especially with practice.
I have personally done a blindfolded taste test between red and white wines with other participants and independent observers. The experimenters intentionally tried to fool me and the other tasters with obscure/non-traditional whites, like a white Cabernet (incidentally the worst non-corked wine I’ve ever tasted). All of us were able to get the vast majority correct, and the other tasters were not serious wine drinkers (if I remember correctly, the white Cab and a rose were the two wines that tripped people up).
I’ve also hosted wine parties with double-blind wine tastings seven or eight times. While the most expensive bottle doesn’t always win in scoring, the cheapest bottles usually place at or near the bottom. And there does seem to be a correlation with more serious wine drinkers choosing the more expensive choices in my tastings.
I think most serious wine drinkers will agree with the general sentiment that once you get to mid-priced wines (say $20 and over), you can find wines that you personally will enjoy over many expensive bottles. Finding and collecting those is part of the fun!
+1
Of all the snobs in the world, house snobs, car snobs, country club snobs, golf snobs, tennis snobs, hell even survivalist gun snobs, there is NO snob as snobby or opinionated in my experience as The Wine Snob.
I actually had a friend of ours bring one of these jerks to my 40th B’day Party as her date.
Being a normal red neckish kinda affair, one of my buds made 5 gallons of cheap sangria. (it was a week-end long party!) (I guess he thought it would go just as well with hot dogs AND hamburgers AND bacon & eggs AND pit bbq)
Wine guy romped into a 5 minute dissertation about the Sangia’s of Spain vs Portugal. That it was a drink of the ‘lower classes’, and fisherman and that it was often a way of using inferior or ‘off’ wines, often made and left in old wine casks to give it ‘depth’.
He was quite satisfied with having shown us how smart he was, until my partner said,
“..this here’s Boone’s Farm and tropical fruit cocktail, aged fer two nites in’a coleman drank cooler…”
Wine guy was quiet the rest of the evening. I think he had a lot of water to drink.
/guffaw
there is NO snob as snobby or opinionated in my experience as The Wine Snob.
In most places, perhaps. If you ever visit Seattle, you will find coffee snobs who easily compare.
Seattle is snobville. The ‘protagonists’ of Frasier underplay their roles.
EW,
I’ve been out there a number of times, and I agree that they’re just as bad. But they are riding a new tend in their coffee hyping. Wine snobs have been around for hundreds of years, so I give them the nod as the Snobs at the top of my list.
As someone trained in tasting and flavors who has done this experiment, I can tell you from first hand experience that you can tell the difference between red and colored white wine.
You have to close your eyes or do it in a dark room.
Vision with the processing behind it is a very powerful sense.
As for the quality of wine vs the cost, one of the world’s most noted wine flavor scientists once told me, “Know the difference between a hundred dolllar wine and a ten dollar wine?
“$90 dollars”
You have to close your eyes or do it in a dark room.
Vision with the processing behind it is a very powerful sense.
Perhaps, but that’s a very artificial test because very few people drink wine in perfectly dark rooms.
I have heard about people closing their eyes during wine tastings. But if closing your eyes changes the tast of the wine, shouldn’t you keep them open and judge the taste the way it would normally be consumed?
Wine tastings aren’t the way wine is normally consumed. For example, one normally eats a meal during consumption of the wine. Wine tasting doesn’t do that. So yes, it makes sense that someone who wishes to taste the wine rather than their expectations of the wine, would taste it with their eyes closed.
So yes, it makes sense that someone who wishes to taste the wine rather than their expectations of the wine, would taste it with their eyes closed.
Oh? Do you choose salt based on the way it tastes by itself, rather than on food?
That method makes about as much sense as choosing a car stereo based on the way it sounds in a recording studio, rather than in your car.
After moving to california, i discovered so many forms of snobberies that i could not even dream existed. Wine snobbery is one of the most obvious and ridiculous ones.
And i do like a good wine.
This is a cautionary tale about human decision biases. Or to put it another way: You should dress well and shave if you anticipate an encounter with the police.